


with wings as eagles

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: Drug Use, Gen, Post-Season/Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 14:59:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18013058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: In prison, Boyd waits for Raylan.





	with wings as eagles

**Author's Note:**

> Isaiah 40:31 (KJV): "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."

Boyd passes four years in prison before Raylan comes to visit. He doesn’t find God, those first few months inside. The first few months he waits for something around every corner, waits for every visiting day, waits for a guard to pull him aside and say there’s someone come to see him who won’t stand a moment’s delay.

Raylan never did develop any patience. Though, to be fair, Boyd never really tried to cultivate any in him. Boyd never was any good at making Raylan wait.

The first few months Boyd keeps expecting something, though just what’s he’s anticipating he couldn’t say. Raylan to drop by and say they’ve found Ava, perhaps, though it’s not likely that Raylan would confess that particular truth in light of the vow that Boyd made. Mayhap he’s waiting for Raylan to come by and ask about the weather, or declare that he’s in desperate need of Boyd’s assistance on some new fugitive hunt. But Raylan’s down in Miami and Ava’s gone with the wind, and the guard stays silent and there’s no one for Crowder on visiting days and whatever it is Boyd’s waiting for, it don’t come.

First Boyd waits. The world grows gravid with waiting, round as a dew drop, every moment an inhale as he waits for the water to break. It gets so Boyd can’t breathe for all the times he’s inhaled. It gets so Boyd can’t breathe.

Then he discovers opiates. Opiates prick the belly of the dew drop, turn it to rain streaking slowly down the glass. Opiates let Boyd forget just what it is he doesn’t know he’s waiting for. This ain’t the first time Boyd’s bitten into this particular forbidden fruit, of course. Not with having served in Kuwait. Not with having Bo Crowder as his daddy, and running Bo’s drugs by the time he was sixteen.

Boyd had never much cared for opiates. He didn’t like having his brain slowed down, having his nimble tongue weighted in his mouth. He didn’t drink too deeply, either, not like Johnny or Bowman or most of his friends. Boyd’s mind was his greatest asset, and he saw no reason to compromise it for a cheap trick.

He welcomes the opiates in prison. He welcomes the way they allow him to breathe deeply, the way they let him stroll past the guard without wondering wondering wondering if his name is on the tip of the guard’s tongue, wondering wondering wondering if today is the day a man with a hat has sauntered onto Tramble’s grounds.

One long, slippery afternoon, he floats so high that for a moment he forgets Raylan Givens’s name.

Boyd stops taking the drugs after that. The comedown ain’t easy, but it’s easier than nearly losing something you thought it was impossible to misplace.

Raylan doesn’t come. But he will, one day, and Boyd will be sober when that day arrives. He will look Raylan in the eye, and he will know just who he is. He will know everything in the world there is to know, when that day comes.

Boyd finds God in the acrid wake of the drugs. Rather, he finds the church, the community of believers he had once gathered around him, the men who had been cut down. Boyd ain’t so sure God exists—though Raylan says He does, but Raylan ain’t been shot through the heart twice like Boyd, Raylan ain’t never died on a dining room floor and stared resurrection in the face—but he has faith in the men who come to the Word. He has faith in the power of believing. He has faith that one day Raylan Givens will walk through Tramble’s prison doors. Boyd looks around every corner, watches every guard, anticipates each visiting day. Boyd clasps his faith with both hands, and waits.


End file.
